I don't know for sure if the info I give here will spoil the mystery for anyone, but just in case, I clicked the box; I'd hate to ruin this great story for anyone.

Liked this much better than the first one! James's skill as a mystery novelist is certainly growing! She had me thinking she'd given the murderer away almost at the beginning! Okay, okay, I'm really gullible! But she's also really good! I thought she was writing the novel in such a way that we (the readers) had the inside scoop, but the detective still had to figure things out. Boy I couldn't have been more wrong! Ha! I love it when an author fools me so completely! And best of all, our Inspector was fooled too!!! I really like that James has written Inspector Dalgliesh to be such a real person, i.e., fallible and yet humble enough to be chagrinned (or slightly irritated with himself) that he'd so completely overlooked something so obvious.

Very satisfying mystery I got it almost correct. The motive was staring me in the face. However, PD James teases us with a few red herrings. So who did it? A doctor, nurse, secretary, janitor? The list of suspects are strong with each having a motive.

Like Dalgliesch I tried to make it more complicated than it was. A psychiatric clinic with an administrator who cannot empathize and is disliked by everyone including her cousin who works there. Nagle a painter working there as a porter, his mistress a secretary called Priddy, Doctor Steiner a little bit neurotic and many more in a clinic treating mentally ill people. The closed room mystery was explained and so simple when put in context.

What is so good with this story are the clues and of course working out who has the strongest motive. An enjoyable read.

I am fairly certain did read this in the 90s but I didn’t remember any of it this time around. The crime takes place in a mental health clinic for out-patients. The victim is the administrative officer and is generally disliked by the doctors and staff. At just over 250 pages, this was a lot shorter than other Daglish mysteries. It was also reminiscent of Agatha Christie in that James gives the reader all the clues necessary to figure out who the murderer is.

n  n A Mind To Murder by P.D. James is the second book in the Inspector Dalgleish mystery series. In this mystery, Dalgleish and his assistant, Sgt Martin, investigate the murder of the Administrative Officer at a London psychiatrist facility. To all intents it appears that the murder is an inside job. As with the other PD James books I've read, I'm impressed with how intelligently James writes. The story is a methodical police investigation, but I enjoy how she lays out a story, the methodical investigation, the development of all of the main characters; Dalgleish and suspects alike. Dalgleish is a thoughtful investigator, Martin, with is more down-to-earth way of looking at things, a perfect assistant. It's a pleasure to read such a well-crafted story and satisfying to discover the conclusion. I look forward to reading the next book in this series. (4 stars)

I read this book many, many years ago and was looking for a quick read recently when it fell out of my wardrobe and landed at my feet. Decision made. This was first published in 1963 and it still holds up really well as a great murder mystery. It gives me a new found admiration for P.D. James, that she can still hold her own in this genre, after so many decades of writing and against so many new authors. She is still one of the best - no contest. This is an Adam Dalgleish police procedural mystery,(Hope I spelled that right), and I love the fact that it's all based on one murder and the investigation surrounding it, as against the new crime thrillers there are so many of these days, where it is necessary to have bodies piled up to the roof (literally in some books). Miss Bolam is found murdered at the Steen Psychiatric clinic and everyone inside the clinic is interviewed as suspects, as it looks like the murder was committed by someone working there. So, you get a list of suspects, possible motives and a good old fashioned who-dunnit. I really enjoyed it. It took me back to my Agatha Christie reading days and a desire to re-read all of P.D. James books and then, maybe I will revisit Ms. Christie. Enjoyed it, a must for all crime/mystery lovers. Get back to basics and the really good authors of this genre.

P D James's second Adam Dalgliesh mystery was published in 1963 and so is on the 1963 list for My Big Fat Reading Project. Only three weeks earlier I had read Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar, making it a bit of a shock (pun intended) to open A Mind to Murder and find it set in a London psychiatric clinic. In between the electric shock and LSD treatments as well as psychiatric "talk therapy" sessions, the administrator of the clinic is murdered in the basement amid a confusion of scattered patient files.

This reader's personal tastes were confirmed: P D James is hands down a superior mystery writer to Agatha Christie. (I know there are many readers who would not agree with me, but it is what it is.) Right out of the gate she sets up the rivalries and tension between the various therapists, the nurses and secretaries, and the victim. Miss Bolam had been nearly universally disliked by all the staff, giving Inspector Dalgliesh a knotty problem as he tried to single out the suspects. Every doctor had an alibi while the rest had some issue with their boss.

As the investigation proceeds, Ms James also writes scenes with the various characters interacting while not in the Inspector's presence. Quite soon the reader comes to know all these people and what is going on in their personal lives. I felt like I was doing my own work to figure out who done it and that made the reading even more enjoyable.

In the end however, it was Inspector Dalgliesh who found the correct line of criminal activity to follow and solved the crime in an intense series of time sensitive incidents. My only complaint was that I could not figure out what led him to follow up that particular line of inquiry and suddenly felt left out of the story where previously I had thought I was part of it.

A breach of patient confidentiality was the initial cause of events leading to the murder. That issue as well as the conflicts of opinion among the doctors about various approaches to treating mental illness, made the story resonate with current times even though it was written over 60 years ago.

The first P D James novel I read was Children of Men and I was struck by her intelligence, her insight into her characters, and her sense of social consciousness. Now that I have gone back to read her earlier books I am hooked and look forward to more of them.

Mystery set in the Steen Psychiatric Clinic. A woman, administrative officer for the clinic, is found dead in the basement with a chisel through her heart. Inspector Dalgleish investigates the murder.

Clever plot with some nice twists, interesting characters and an exciting denouement. I enjoyed the setting of the clinic, and the quirky details that come from the novel being written in the 1960s. For me, this was a more assured novel than the first in the series and I couldn't put it down, so I'm looking forward now to the next in the series.

After skipping around among P.D. James' cozy police procedurals, reading four of the more recent books, I'm starting at the beginning and working my way through. This one isn't markedly better than Cover Her Face, her first. All the suspects, colleagues at a psychiatric clinic, naturally either hated or disliked the murderee, or stood to benefit from her death. James writes cynically and concescendingly - she creates an unlikeable group (except for Dalgliesh and Martin, obviously); class differences and Agatha Christie loom large (maybe this is unavoidable in 60s Britain), and the patients on LSD therapy all make this seem like a faintly ridiculous time capsule. I did find it kind of charming that Dalgliesh's first book of poetry is undergoing its third printing, and he is being feted because the poems "happened to catch a public mood."

The fans of a closed circle murder mysteries might find 'A Mind to Murder' worthwhile. Especially if they prefer the detective investigating the case to be a true gentelman and a poet.

Simpatiškas angliškas detektyvas.

Tai pirmoji mano pažintis su P. D. James (knygos nugarėlėje ji tituluojama Anglijos detektyvų karaliene, tačiau lietuviškai tėra išversta tik keletas jos knygų). Detektyvas parašytas 1963 m. ir nukelia į tų laikų D. Britaniją. Nužudymo bylos centre - uždaras psichiatrijos klinikos kolektyvas, kurio kiekvienas narys potencialus įtariamasis dėl vadovės nužudymo. Daktarai, seselės, sargai, sekretorės - visi turi, ką slėpti, todėl detektyvui Adamui Dalglišui tenka atmetinėti įtariamuosius vieną po kito.

Man patinka tokio tipo detektyvai - daug charakterių su savo istorijomis, kurios iš pradžių klaidina skaitytoją, bet kartu kuria intrigą po intrigos - kai skaitant išsirinktas įtariamasis atkrenta, po to išsirenki kitą - atkrenta ir jis ir t. t.

Vienas iš detektyvinės serijos pagrindinių dalykų, kuris apsprendžia, ar skaityti seriją toliau - detektyvas, tiriantis bylas. Čia pagrindinis veikėjas yra Skotland Jardo detektyvas Dalglišas, kuris pasirodė protingas, simpatiškas, bet neišsiskiriantis. Todėl aiškesnei nuomonei susidaryti reikėtų daugiau duomenų:), t. y. reikėtų perskaityti daugiau serijos knygų. 

Iš esmės knyga patiko - simpatiškai angliškas ir truputį senamadiškas, intrigą išlaikantis detektyvas.

I didn't like this one as well as the first in the series. I did like Dalgliesh himself, and I learning a few more facts about his life, and the way he thinks. I also liked solid, reliable Inspector Martin. But the supporting cast of characters was less interesting. I was less interested in the the staff of a psychiatric clinic than a small group of family and friends in a country village. In fact, I was only mildly interested in a couple of the doctors (Dr. Steiner and Dr. Saxon), but they aren't really major characters.

It's well written, it just didn't pique my interest in quite the same way as its predecessor, which I thought was really very well done.

I will be reading the next one though.

Also, it strikes me that James is a master at making you surprised when it turns out the most obvious person did it. Because in both of her books that I've read, the most obvious person did it. She just somehow also convinces me that the most obvious person couldn't have done it. It's really very effective.

I tried to read this one night in a single sitting and only succumbed when I woke up with the book in my hand, still propped open by my thumb. But for an early hour demanded by work, I would have put on a pot of coffee and finished the job with relish.

I like Dalgliesh, and though I have only read the first two volumes in James's series of his exploits, I have already witnessed interesting layers in his personality. His melancholic nature is par for the genre; however, other traits pull him out of the usual and into a singular space that, I have no doubt, will draw me towards the next volumes. I won't speak for the mystery in this one, as that part of the genre doesn't hold my interest nearly as much as James's treatments of character, tone and reflection do.